Wow, praise the Lord for his grace. His strength is made perfect in weakness and you’re looking at one weak, needy, struggling Christian who has — somehow by the grace of God — run the race now every day for just about 49 years. And as I come looking at the nations of the world and thinking of some of the strongholds, I’m reminded of that Scripture that says, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty unto God, to the pulling down of strongholds” (2 Corinthians 10:4). And I believe many strongholds exist today. I’m not into super extreme teaching about that, but I don’t like to overreact also to what may seem extreme and end up in the deep freeze of dead orthodoxy.

So I believe there is somehow a middle road in which the Holy Spirit is guiding us through the Scriptures to have biblical understanding. And I think again of that Scripture, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty unto God, to the pulling down of strongholds.” And some would always emphasize the strongholds in our own lives, and I accept that, but I think also if we have the vision of Jesus for the nations and the world in which we live, then we see nations also where the strongholds seem to be somewhat greater than other places.

I think of North Korea. It’s an absolutely impossible situation, almost beyond comprehension if you’ve read the emails, if you’re following that nation. It’s in total contrast to South Korea. I think of Tibet, which is raped by communist China, was a nation, no longer a nation, but in God’s sight, the Tibetan people are beautiful people that he loves. There is almost no church in Tibet. I lived in Nepal for a number of years and got to meet Tibetans. We have had somebody traveling in and out, but it’s just an impossible situation. What can we say of the Maldives? Almost nothing in the Maldives. Socotra, I haven’t even heard of the first believer in Socotra. What can we say of Saudi Arabia where just a few days ago, 250 people were swept into eternity at a religious Haj, where they were trampled to death. It hardly got even any coverage in our newspapers as we were focused on the Super Bowl and what happened there at halftime. There were 250 people swept into eternity without Christ.

Libya, another stronghold where there’s just been a little bit of loosening lately. Chechnya, which we read a lot about in the newspaper, has almost no believers in Chechnya. I had to circle it because it’s a small place. Here’s the city of Grozny. Afghanistan, a new day for Afghanistan, but almost no functioning churches as you would know at church. There are believers. There are quite a few people there now. My own nephew is there. You may know people who are in Afghanistan and Iraq. Both those places have totally changed in terms of openness to the gospel in the past couple of years since the global crisis of September 11th. And we think of many other places.

Let’s just pray for a few of these places because I know you’re in a mood of prayer. To come and arrive as I just got in from Chicago and see people gathered in groups praying just about blew my circuits, and there’s so little of this kind of praying going on. In our culture, we’re bigger into eating than we are into praying. You of course have never noticed that, so I needed to mention that. So it was great to arrive here and see people gathered, praying. And if you want, you can look at these countries as I pray with you for some of these strongholds.

Books and Resources

It would’ve been worth coming here just to pray with you and to lift up this globe. I remember the Amsterdam Evangelist Conference. The only thing I was able to do was hold up my globe and pray a prayer that the Holy Spirit from what feedback I received during that prayer touched many, many people about the nations of the world. And of course, the press was tired of just head shots of various preachers, so the globe got more news coverage than almost anybody at the entire conference. What an amazing cyberspace planet we live in, and I’m just so glad that the Lord led me to run out during that final song and just go to the book display, and I just commend you on one of the greatest displays I’ve ever seen at a pastor’s conference, really.

I’ve just gone over there and grabbed a few of my favorite books and I hope before you go, miss your lunch — most of you eat too much anyway — and go over there and get some of these books. I think of this brand new, relatively new book by John Piper, and I don’t push it because he’s here. I just bought 1,000 of them. It’s the book Don’t Waste Your Life. This is sort of like Operation Mobilization in the 60s with a Calvinistic streak. We were only developing. I think it’s available at a special price and it’s a book that just has so much to say about biblical commitment and discipleship, but if you think that book is hot, you should try this bombshell: Brothers, We are Not Professionals. I know that John will be in deep trouble for this book. We’ve already had people sending emails explaining the wrong use of the word “professionals.”

And I think we need to read the book before we send our emails. We, of course, do want professional pilots. I prefer to come on the airlines where they’re very committed to professionalism, but in case your discernment is weak, pastoring a church is not the same as piloting an airplane. And if you’re still hung up on that, you may want to get some counseling. Brothers, it’s a plea to pastors for radical ministry. Everyone without two copies is probably a visionless backslider, but we’re very big into forgiveness.

I had the joy of pushing this book last night to 2,000 to 3,000 people at Moody Bible Institute Founder’s Week, which also just happened to go out over a 100 radio stations across the nation. This is a book again by John, produced to go along with the new film, The Passion of the Christ. I’ve not seen that film, but I’ve talked to people who have. It’s not going to be an easy film to watch, but if you listen to audio tapes or you’ve seen other films about Jesus Christ, even going back to Ben-Hur, you know that watching Jesus Christ dying on the cross is not an easy experience, but I believe God is going to use this film. No film is perfect. The fact that we could flood this book out is good. We’re doing it in Great Britain where I live and we’re excited about what the Holy Spirit’s going to do through the film, what he’s going to do through the people that see the film as they go out and share the vision and get involved in conversation. I’m sure it’ll be a topic in your churches and then also through this phenomenal book.

Pushing Christian Literature

It’s not a coincidence that two people that I’m a raving fan of are speaking at the same conference, John Piper and Randy Alcorn. I would just urge you to be sure to pick up all or at least most of Randy’s books. I like his smaller books more than his bigger ones because I don’t have so much time to read. So The Purity Principle and The Treasure Principle are hot and if you email him, he’ll give you a deal if you buy a 1,000. In fact, he gave me 1,000 for free. Don’t try for that. That’s aiming too high. These are books that need to go out to your congregations.

When we first went to Great Britain 47 years ago, we noticed that only a small number of churches had a book table. In Great Britain today, almost every church that’s worth its weight, even in salt, has a book table and pushes dynamic Christian books. The influence of Christian literature in Britain has been felt, even though we’re in a nation that is in a much more difficult state spiritually, I can assure you, than the United States with less than even eight percent going to church. But I do believe the spiritual temperature of the average English Christian is a little higher than the average evangelly-fish in the United States. Forgive me for that statement. No doubt, your church is the exception.

I discovered that selling books doesn’t run very well with my own temperament, and so lately I’ve just been giving books away. It’s much faster, less complaints. People don’t come back for their money back. So I’d like to give every one of you a copy of my latest book called Out of The Comfort Zone. We also have in the book display, Operation World. How many of you yet don’t have a copy of this book? Raise your hand, you don’t yet have a copy?

Let me just pray: Lord, I ask forgiveness for these dear slow brothers. Maybe their wives are hindering them. I pray for them as well, in Jesus’s name. Amen.

I was sincere about that. I know you were laughing, but I am amazed at the ignorance among men in ministry about things that are our phenomenal, this is probably the top missionary book in the entire history of the church. Edition after edition, in many languages, we’re talking hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of copies. It has prayer requests and information. You’ll use it as a research tool the rest of your life, and I know that Bethlehem Baptist pushes this book big time. I know they’re ahead of their times and they probably intimidate a lot of you just to even come here, but God will give you grace as you head back home and do great things.

Freely Received, Freely Give

Now, I think I could have started off with a few misunderstandings, like not appreciating pastors, and so let me just set the record straight. My love for men in pastorate in ministry has been proven by God’s grace every day for 49 years. I love men and women in ministry. I have had personal heart-to-heart fellowship with over 1,000 pastors in 50 nations. That’s what I do. I have lunch with pastors in Christian leaders — or breakfast or supper. The secret of OM has not been George Verwer, I can tell you. Often, God has worked despite me.

The secret of OM is that it’s based on the word of God. It’s our high esteem of Scripture. It’s our high esteem of course of God himself. And one of our favorite books that I pushed at Urbana way back years ago when I spoke there is Let The Nations Be Glad! The Supremacy of God in Missions and we’ve had the thrill of distributing hundreds of thousands of books about God, whether it’s Andrew Murray or Piper or A.W Tozer, or many other authors. Our distribution total of literature some years ago when we began to lose track, went over 1,000,000,000 books, Bibles and pieces of literature — all because one lady put my name on our Holy Ghost hit list. It’s an incredible story.

A Personal Narrative

Even to this day, I am not a natural Christian. I find religion difficult and I sometimes find Christianity difficult, but somehow God saved me because we have a sovereign God. This lady heard about me. I was in trouble with the police. I owned three businesses. I was a son of a Dutch immigrant. My grandfather was an atheist. My father came over as a boy from the Netherlands. My other grandfather was Irish, Scottish, and English blood combined, which is basically toxic. I know some of you feel that personally, at least you look like it on your face.

I only saw that dear grandfather three or four times in my entire life. The final time he was dying of DTs in a hospital in New Jersey. And as Chris Rea, pop singer said in one of his songs, “I was on the highway to hell.” I got hooked into the world of pornography at only 15 years of age. Fortunately, it was sort of a mild brand and I don’t think I fell over the cliff into the pot, but I was very close. And this lady not only prayed that I would become a Christian, she prayed that I would become a missionary. Imagine that. She didn’t even discuss this with me. It’d be nice if I could have got a phone call saying I was going to be a missionary rather than a business person making money in New Jersey.

Then she sent me a spiritual hand grenade through the mail, what you call in the church a Gospel of John from the Pocket Testament League. I just spoke three days ago in London at the 110th anniversary of the Pocket Testament League, an incredible movement of God dedicated to the distribution of Scriptures and especially the Gospel of John across the world. We’re talking tens of millions. And then a character, sort of a wild man, sort of the spiritual converted combination of Clint Eastwood, ET, and Madonna rolled into New York City. His name was Billy Graham.

I was warned about him that he was some kind of an extremist. Somebody said he was even a hypnotist, but somehow because God’s Spirit was working, some business people and others gave me a free seat on a bus, and a few people were praying for me. I went to that meeting in Madison Square Garden almost 49 years ago next month, with my binoculars to watch this hypnotist. I sat as far away as I could.

Great Victories

Now, let me explain something that happened parallel to all this. I became involved in my local community church, a good Reformed church that had rejected basic biblical theology. If you know anything about the Reformed church in America, don’t confuse it with the Christian Reformed. The Christian Reformed are usually orthodox. They’re generally asleep, but they’re usually orthodox. The Dutch Reformed Church is closer to the Presbyterian Church of America where there are some dynamic evangelicals and boy, I tell you, those in New Jersey sometimes are really suffering.

But I was in a totally liberal church where even the basics of the gospel were never really brought out, and we certainly didn’t believe the Bible was the word of God or that people needed to be saved from sin. I became the president of the Youth fellowship. I became the assistant to the pastor — talk about the blind leading the blind. And I had a good old American religion. I was then granted the highest religious award in Boy Scouting, “The God and Country Award.” Imagine going to hell with the God and Country award in your hand. That would be spectacular even in hell.

I just praise God that the cause of biblical Christianity with all of our weaknesses, and we don’t pretend to be perfect, has seen great victories. We have seen great victories in some of our seminaries. We have seen great victories in many churches. We have felt the impact of that in the British Isles where even in the Anglican Church, many of our great people are dynamic evangelicals such as John Stott. It’s exciting to look back, at least in my lifetime and to see what God has done in the midst of the heartbreaks, the growth of liberalism, the growth of confusion, and the turning away often from biblical theology. God has been working and I know you are a part. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t part of what the Holy Spirit of God is doing in our nation and in our generation across the world.

I give thanks to God. It’s not easy for me because I have a mega negative streak. My great fear is I’m going to end up the Darth Vader of the evangelical world. We don’t want too many illustrations about that, I can assure you. I don’t know if any of you struggle with the negative streak and trying to deal with negativity, which always is usually hand in hand with bad attitudes. Do any of you struggle with that or am I the only one? Well, may God give you grace.

Laughing or Crying

You might remember this one story about 25 years ago, I was determined to become more optimistic. Some of my optimistic friends were really winding me up and I was struggling with a lot of things I thought were going on in OM that were really stupid, and I didn’t know why God wasn’t saving more people in Afghanistan. So I was arguing with him as well. I decided I need to become more optimistic. I’ll never forget it. I was in Pakistan preaching in the cathedral and my leaders, who always worry about me saying something stupid, urged me to be a little more careful. So I wanted to do my best and they said, “Would you mind dressing properly?” I’m not known for my proper mode, but I put on a suit and a tie. The bishop was sitting there in the front row and I decided to do my best.

As I was preaching, a pigeon flew over me and dropped its load on my sleeve. Typical negative experience, right? This is what life is about. One pigeon after another. Just wait till you get home. Just wait till you get home. If you think your wife is interested that you were blessed in Minneapolis, guess again. If any of them do seem to show that that is the number one priority as you arrive home, send me an email and she will get 10 free books. Well, it’s good that you know how to laugh because in ministry, it’s either a lot of laughing or a lot of crying. I’ve done both.

But anyway, God rescued me in that church because I looked at that audience and I knew a new day was coming in my life. And as I looked out at that audience in Pakistan and looked at my sleeve, I just said, “Praise Jesus, the elephants here don’t fly.” As you get back home in the next couple of days, as you get back home in the next couple of days, don’t worry about the pigeons, but watch out for elephants. We’re speaking spiritually.

A Conspiracy from Hell

I think of those words — I’ve preached on it to pastors many, many times — in Acts 23. There were men that said they would not eat until Paul was dead. Acts 23:12 says:

When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul.

Have you ever preached from that passage? How many of you have preached from Acts 23? Raise your hand. You’re not into Acts yet. You haven’t got there yet. Is it not Calvinistic enough? Why don’t you try Acts? I gave a whole series on the book of Acts and it’s on these cassettes and maybe even beyond CD now. Nobody really wants them, so if you email me, I’ll send you the set free. It’s 11 messages from the Book of Acts, but I just have been deeply moved through this passage and I want to say — and I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration — I believe there’s a conspiracy brewed in hell to destroy you and to destroy your ministry.

I remember when I first came to Bethlehem many years ago, I arrived at a time when John came and shared with me when the church had just been attacked through one of the Christian leaders going through some kind of crisis. I don’t remember the details, but it was a fiery dart, and I believe there is a conspiracy. This isn’t just some history about Paul who we tend to put in a special category, which I think is wrong. Today there’s a conspiracy in hell to destroy you, to destroy your family, to destroy your church.

A Great Vision

I don’t need to say more about that. That’s not the message on my heart this morning, but I want to convey my commitment to pastors and to you, your churches and your ministries. I try to jump over hoops to make sure I’m ministering in a local church generally two times every Sunday, and 25,000 messages later, somehow I can testify that I’ve never stood in the pulpit of even the smallest or the biggest church in the world without knowing the grace of God and the anointing of the Spirit of God to share his word in grace and love. And of course, there is the human factor as well.

Another Scripture in my heart from the book of Acts is from chapter 13. By the way, I’m still trying to recover from the counsel given to me as I came in by one of the leaders. He said to me, “Be completely free. Go as long as you want.” This was unbelievable. I will not do that, but just to have the freedom to go a little bit longer. Joe stole last night in his graciousness, and gave me the extra five minutes. It’s all on the radio. But that gave me five minutes in speaking about lukewarmness and the Holy Spirit to give an invitation to those young people and thousands who were gathered there to make a recommitment to Jesus, to stand to their feet and ask God on the basis of Acts 4:31 to fill them with the Holy Spirit, and somehow maybe 500 or more stood to their feet during that time of commitment, of decision, and I just thank the Lord when we’re granted even a few extra minutes and somehow can do that kind of thing.

The passage I want to look at now briefly is Acts 13. In the last chapter, my book, I talk about a vision, a combination of ideas and scripture that God put on my heart in flight in Latin America. Now it’s called the Acts 13 Breakthrough. It’s more or less just a concept. You don’t have to worry about the number, praying for 200,000 new workers. That’s not the important thing. The focus was on wanting to see 100,000 more churches move into missions in a serious way. That was the core of the vision.

Picture of a Biblical Church

The vision was based on Acts 13, where five people were worshiping just as we’ve been worshiping, and they were fasting. The passage says:

While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off. So, being sent out by the Holy Spirit, they went down to Seleucia, and from there they sailed to Cyprus (Acts 13:2–4).

The rest is history. They had John Mark with him as a helper. This is a picture of a biblical church. A biblical church is a sending church, and if your church hasn’t sent out any missionaries lately, you need to rethink your strategy, your prayer ministry, and other aspects of what is happening there because surely, this was a new church. This was a struggling church. It was not started through some systematic church growth program. It started by a group of people scattered by the persecution, and what did they do? It seems to me they sent out two of their very best people. Today we seem to at times send out people that we don’t actually want. You don’t know how many people have come on Operation Mobilization because the local church were weary of them, they heard about OM, and they thought, “This is a good place to get rid of this guy and see if he can come back.”

Usually they had a fairly good attitude, like 70 percent good, and they hoped that OM would disciple them and train them and maybe when they came back things would work out a lot better. But I believe of course God is sovereign. We’re in a very different world. The whole thing of short-term missions, young people getting into missions in order to get training rather than thinking of them as missionaries. Everybody in OM almost for their first two years is considered in a training program and we ask churches to commend them to us short term, not a life, saying, “You’re going to be a apostolic missionary,” not necessarily a Paul and Barnabas, but to commend them to us for training and for of course, on the job ministry training.

Qualified Missionaries

But then I believe there is a place to see more qualified people who are more proven, church planters sent out just as Paul and Barnabas, and I’d ask you to consider this and to perhaps preach your way through the Book of Acts and allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you. Surely, the Book of Acts shows that the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, is the Chief Executive Officer of all missionary work. We can have prayer gatherings like Acts 13. I was speaking about that last night because the whole theme of Founder’s Week this year was focused on prayer. There’s a movement among students at Moody for more prayer and they selected that title, which is the first time that’s ever happened in Founder’s Week, which has gone on since around 1921.

It’s incredible what is going on among many young people today, and I pray that especially those of you who are strong in theology, have strong convictions, and you’re concerned about certain things that may be happening among young people, that you will have the discernment to know how to exhort people and to encourage them and then bring correction, rather than the old cold water bucket brigade which has douched many a young person’s faith, as somehow they discover all these things they’re supposed to believe and supposed to practice the moment they’re a dedicated follower of Jesus Christ.

Brothers and sisters, I believe we as believers are on a pilgrimage. Surely, Pilgrim’s Progress became one of the most famous books in the world. We never arrive in the sense that now we’ve got everything together. We keep learning. I’m having to learn as a grandfather things that I thought I knew before these five little grandchildren came along. Do any of you have grandchildren? You all look so young, a few of you. What a blessing, right? You find them a blessing. Tony Campolo said that’s God’s gift to you for not killing your own kids. Sometimes I have the privilege of speaking together with Tony Campolo, a slightly controversial character, and I just love it because after he speaks, I come across so mellow and loving and it’s helping to change my reputation and open new doors that have been closed to me up until now.

Warning Against Lukewarmness

But perhaps the passage that’s on my heart the most is there in Revelation 3. I hope you can take this home with you and think about it. It’s a message for pastors because it’s a message for the local church, and I hope you will study the Book of Revelation because it’s a book that’s often neglected. We don’t hear much ministry from the book of Revelation.

I thank God for a man in England named Nigel Lee who was with OM for about 20 years, then became the leader of the InterVarsity movement in Britain. He, I believe, was asked to speak at the Keswick Convention, which is a powerful convention proclaiming the word of God in a very strong way. In America it got criticized years ago as people just thought this is sort of a deeper life convention. People didn’t like “deeper life” even though they didn’t know what it was. They didn’t like it.

But the Keswick Convention is a biblical convention. Many great Reformed teachers and preachers speak there. Everyone who speaks there is biblical and Nigel Lee, this young man who I had the privilege of recruiting out of Cambridge University where many of our early recruits came from, spoke at the Keswick Convention from the Book of Revelation. I heard some of that ministry. But we’re just going to look at Revelation 3. The passage says:

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent (Revelation 3:15–19).

I thank God that you took the time to come to Minneapolis, not the warmest place. The word is out that for conferences you should choose Orlando, Los Angeles, or San Diego, not Minneapolis, but obviously you are hot enough for God to be willing to come to a very cold place. I’m more into centigrade than fahrenheit. So on the plane I asked the man in front of me what that meant when he said it was 10 degrees below zero? And he explained that freezing starts at 32, right? And then zero, that’s unbelievable. Zero. This guy said, “This is 10 below zero.” You must be here because of Jesus and we hope that whatever the climate, we will go from here with hot hearts.

A Constant Fire for Christ

I want to speak to you for a few moments about revival. I want to speak to you for a few moments about having a lifetime in which every day you are on fire for Jesus Christ. You say, “How dare you have the authority to speak about that?” Believe me, I’m a struggler. I’m not talking about perfection, but I’m talking about Jesus. My testimony as a struggling, needy ragamuffin is that every day since my conversion, 49 years, I’ve known the fire of God in my soul. If a needy, naturally-backsliding character like me can experience the fire and the grace of God every day since March 5th, 1955, then I feel rather strong that nobody really has an excuse.

So as long as the Lord gives me breath, I want to talk about revival. Revival for me is not firstly the kind of thing that’s had a lot of publicity in the United States, especially in the last 10 years in which we’re praying for some revival that’s sort of going to totally change our country. It’s going to sort close all the bars and liquidate the homosexual problem and liquidate the abortion problem and put all hoppy, Spirit-filled, born-again people around the White House and all these wonderful American dreams, which I believe is very much linked with what we call in London “eyewash.” We’re not going to turn the hands of history back.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t salt and light. That doesn’t mean we don’t pray for that kind of revival. I have been praying for that kind of revival, but we pray with understanding that plan A revival is Jesus. It’s not something you wait for. It’s not something that has to happen because we have seen, and I personally witnessed this, thousands of people copping out from evangelism and missions, doing God’s will in every aspect of the kingdom, with the idea nothing can really take place till revival comes. Americans are now flocking to Wales to celebrate the 100th year. More are flocking there, probably this year, than have ever gone there as missionaries in the past couple of decades. Wales, where I’ve gone to a hundred times, is one of the more decadent spiritual wastelands in the whole of Europe, though there are some beautiful powerful churches. Revival plan A is Jesus reigning and ruling in your heart and mind.

Revival Plan A

Revival plan A is what was outlined in Acts 1:8 or mentioned in Ephesians 5, which says, “Be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 4:31 says, “When they prayed the place where they were gathered was shaken and they went forth and spoke the word of God in boldness.” Somehow through a little book called Calvary Road, somehow through Godly people that influenced me as a young Christian, and through books that must have been in the hundreds before I was even 25 years of age, I came to this conclusion: There’s nothing greater than Jesus. There’s nothing greater than the fact that Jesus, by his Holy Spirit, is living in me, and when he is living in me and therefore being alive in him, referred to in Ephesians 1–2, that is the greatest thing in the world, for me individually.

If through God’s sovereign working a whole bunch of backslidden people through prayer or any other work of grace suddenly all come to Jesus and get revived as it happened in Wales, hallelujah. Who would not want that to happen? But my concern is so many people are discouraged waiting for that to happen, never seeing it happen in their own nation, in their own community. It leads to confusion. My favorite theologian is a man now in heaven named Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones. We’ve sold more copies of his book, Spiritual Depression, than almost any other book that we have ever been involved in helping to publish. I had the joy of knowing this man personally.

I remember when he shook up some of his more small-minded followers because someone like Lloyd Jones would have bighearted, grace-awakened people, but also somehow because the devil is very clever, he would have people following him who were small-minded, judgemental, and what Swindall would call “grace-killers,” and we have a fair number of them in Europe. But Lloyd Jones took a risk and came down to the ship “Doulos” in London in 19, I believe. We had just got this second ship.

Tony Sergeant had become one of my closest friends. He wrote one of the books about Lloyd Jones. I think he helped extend the invitation. Lloyd Jones was an older man by then and he came and gave this message, which I just listened to again, emphasizing the need for the word as well as a need for the work of the Holy Spirit. It is not either-or. It is both that we need in the church of God. The last time I listened to that tape, I believe I was in Scotland. I was walking over the hills of Scotland, listening to the same message again.

Dr. Lloyd Jones in those days would not release any of his ministry onto tapes because he didn’t like people being in the congregation that had heard the message. He went all over Britain preaching and didn’t want people out there to have already heard the message if he gave a message twice. We twisted his arm. I don’t know how this ever happened, and that tape is the first tape he ever released. After he died, suddenly Lloyd Jones’ tapes were falling out of every tree across Great Britain and you can easily get lots of them, but that was the first one to be released. It’s the word and the Spirit.

Be Hot or Cold

I want to ask you something. I don’t know how many people have ever asked you this. I asked the students and the people at Founder’s Week last night the same question. I want to ask you, are you filled with the Holy Spirit? We’re not asking you if you’re now a raving charismatic. I know some people are so nervous about charismatic believers using the word technically rather than the word generally, that in some churches I preach at — because I fellowship a lot among very conservative people — the moment you mention the word Holy Spirit, people are starting to get on guard.

Now, I know that the word Holy Spirit has been abused and there has been horrendous extremes, but I personally believe that overreacting to those extremes and getting in the deep freeze of dead orthodoxy is even more dangerous because the word of God says, “Be hot or be cold, but whatever, don’t be lukewarm.” I want to ask you, has God been during these days exposing any lukewarmness in your own heart? Have you been open to that aspect of the ministry of the Holy Spirit? Certainly in my own life, I have to confess a lifelong struggle with lukewarmness, in some of its most subtle forms.

You say, “Well, what are some of the signs of lukewarmness? What are we talking about here?” With pastors, you need to give a little definition, right? You can get yourself into a hermeneutical or semantic jungle. What are some of the signs? Let me just quickly give seven signs. There’s many more, but seven signs of lukewarmness.

Lack of Love

Number one, of course, is lack of love. It’s a lack of love for God and a lack of love for people around us. For the word says, “Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength,” and, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” With that alone, I’m finished. With that commandment alone, I’m on the way to the cross asking for forgiveness.

I trust you’re all doing a lot better than I am. Praise God for forgiveness. Praise God that we can do that even more than one time on any one day, and when we confess our sin he is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If you think for one moment I am here thinking I’m somehow better than you because I may say a few things that are strong, I would urge you to guess again because that’s not the way I function. I am a needy person here because of the grace of God. I’m here because of paradox and mystery and grace and mercy, and all the other things that I’m still learning about in the word of God. But I have learned a little bit about my inheritance in Jesus, that when I confess my sin, he’s faithful and just to forgive me.

I was almost knocked completely out of ministry with my struggle over lust. Even when I was a Christian leader once, I was walking through woods in England and there was a pornographic magazine hanging in the tree. Since my conversion, I hardly ever spent a single dollar on a pornographic magazine. I had such a desire to use all of my money for the kingdom that just the thought of using any money on such things would cause me to shutter. But somehow when it just appeared as it did that day on a tree in the woods, it caught me off guard.

Now, I’d love to be able to testify how in the power of the Holy Spirit, I just zapped the magazine, it miraculously disappeared, and I went through the woods triumph in Christ. I know I’d get a lot more invitations to preach in your churches perhaps if I gave that testimony, but the truth is that magazine made a complete fool out of me that day in the woods. I fell into a serious lust of the mind and what with us men often goes with it, something we never ever do hardly talk about. I tell you, if I didn’t know the word of God and the grace of God at that moment, that might’ve been the end. I was already directing a movement of 1,000 people. That would’ve been the end — discouragement and depression, Why didn’t God hear my prayers for deliverance?

I’ve had so many people pray over me and lay hands on me. Certain kinds of people I minister to, the moment they hear me, they think I’m demon possessed. They come up after the meeting and they want to lay hands on me and cast out demons. So many people lay hands on my head now my hair’s falling out and my head’s gone flat. I don’t know if any of you battle with lust. I don’t know if any of you’ve had failure in ministry. One Christian organization just fired 15 employees who were hooked on internet pornography. One of the women was on the phone with me. Her husband beat her up 14 times, broke her jaw and broke her nose, but she didn’t believe in divorce.

An extremist teaching about divorce coupled with male chauvinistic nonsense has brought more hurt to women in America than our nation perhaps could ever apologize for, and you can be sure, I don’t believe in divorce as God’s plan A. I’m in a movement that has a track record of 48 years with hardly any divorce in the entire movement, though we have always believed that God forgives people including divorced people, and he can raise them up and use them to be builders in his kingdom. May God somehow open our eyes to what is happening in our own nation and sometimes in our own churches, and may we take greater steps of faith. So a lack of love for God and a lack of love for people is the greatest sign that lukewarmness can come in, and that can happen of course to a Spirit-filled, committed Christian on any particular day.

Prayerlessness

The second sign of lukewarmness is often prayerlessness. If I had a second message here, I would talk to you about prayer. I believe prayerlessness is a sign of lukewarmness. I believe many of our churches are lukewarm because there are no more hot prayer meetings. Pastors being interviewed, some of them have acknowledged they have no prayer life. In one nation, a survey showed the average pastor prays five minutes a day. How could anything ever sink so low among men in ministry? I trust that is not true in your life.

Prayer is a mystery. Prayer seems to be more difficult for people who are Calvinists and Reformed than for people who are Armenian. That is my experience after 49 years of research. John Piper surely would be the exception. If anybody hasn’t noticed that John Piper is a little bit different from the average Reformed person, obviously you have not traveled very much. This is why I have this plea for balance, dynamic biblical theology, but the fullness and the power of the Holy Spirit and the reality of Jesus reigning on the throne.

Again, what can I say? Because I still have so much to learn about all of this. When I was 17 years of age, seeing how God used Billy Graham, having Billy Graham come back to New York City two years after my conversion, and giving a call to form Nights of Prayer, which I had never heard of, I can assure you I’ve never been the same. I started a night of prayer in my own liberal church. Hardly anybody came. At 1:00 a.m. in the morning, I fell asleep and the Assembly of God pastor rolled along at 6:00 a.m. and woke me up. That was my first night of prayer.

We organized another one and God worked in connection with what was happening in the high school. To set the record straight, it was only about 125 that came to Christ in my own ministry in this one meeting. The other 75 came through what God was doing, especially through Billy Graham two years later. I just want to get that 200 number statistic correct. And we know not all those people were saved. A decision does not mean a conversion, and that’s again a subject I would love to talk more about.

But let us go from here with a desire to be men and women of prayer. Let us go from here with a desire to somehow resurrect prayer meetings in our churches, in our community. I believe it is a sin when men of God are not praying together in their city. Canada is a much better example of this. Great Britain is a much better example. I know many nations that are a better example than America in men and women who love Jesus, even if it’s once a month coming together for prayer for the city, for the strongholds in their city. I beseech you to consider helping see something birthed in your town, in your city.

Call for Prayer Meetings

I remember going to a particular town in Wyoming and being stunned that the churches in that town seemed to be in no contact. I specifically asked if there were prayer meetings going on among the leaders. There was nothing. I left town with a broken heart. I didn’t hear much about that town until some years later when that horrendous murder of a homosexual man took place in that town, so that now all over the world people watch an anti-Christian film called The Laramie Project.

Brothers and sisters, if you are not praying and praying together with other men and godly people in your town, you are jeopardizing the kingdom. I’d ask you to turn from it. If you are only concerned about your church, you are on an ego trip. There are whole books explaining how men in ministry can get into ego trips. We are human. We fail. We feel under pressure. We’re often criticized. It’s tougher to be a pastor almost at any time in history. People can go watch television or sit at their computer and get ministry from very gifted communicators.

We don’t all have a great gift to communicate. Some people in the ministry seem to be naturally boring. May the Lord have mercy on them, but somehow I believe God wants to do a new thing in our ministries, that people can see fire in the pulpit again in America. They can see passion in the pulpit again in America. They can see men who maybe they can’t preach the best sermons, maybe they even get mixed up looking for the Scripture as I have at times, but they can see something of the fire. They can see sincerity.

A Failure to Love Difficult People

In counseling and speaking to pastors all over the world, I started to work on a message which someday I’m going to write about or give, called “The 10 Major Blunders of Pastors.” And I can tell you one of them is the failure to love and reach out to difficult people in the congregation, and especially people who don’t like them, who don’t appreciate their ministry, and especially if the man happens to be an elder. You don’t want to know how many churches have split simply because pastors were so caught up in their theology, in their preaching, and with their friends, and with their sports — all these things we’re supposed to be into so that we stay balanced — and they don’t have time for the men who carried the leadership in the church long before they ever got there.

I am tired of getting reports of arrogant men in ministry in America. I’m tired of seeing churches split because some little guy comes out of seminary with what he thinks is a total answer to this church, which he feels is dead and they don’t really understand this or that, instead of getting in there, winning people, loving people, understanding people, and going to them when they’re going through a crisis. He doesn’t try to understand why they may behave this way. That is not to excuse any sin on their part.

I would beg of you to make prayer a greater priority. I would beg of you to humble yourself and see if there’s even a millimeter of arrogance that has gone into your ministry that you can deal with. Even if it means going to someone in your church next week and saying, “Brother, I am sorry for what I said.” Why are ministers so slow to apologize for stupid things they say from the pulpit? Our nation is now known throughout the world. Do you want to know how much anti-Americanism is out there now? Just take a little journey. It’s at the highest level, double than ever before in the history of the United States. And if you think that’s easy for those of us, thousands of Americans who are out there as missionaries, maybe you want to take a journey. Some of it is because of stupid things people say from the pulpit.

Having a Humble Heart

A.W Tozer was a man of tremendous insight and he used to say stupid things from the pulpit. And in his book, he acknowledged it and said it was one of his greatest weaknesses. He pointed out that it’s very hard to hold a pastor accountable for what he says in the pulpit. So they continue to say things that are often confusing or hurtful.

I know I open myself up when I say this because I will probably get an email about something here that I said that is not sensitive enough or maybe not biblical enough. But let me tell you, my friends, I will read your email and you may get an apology and John Piper may get an apology. I know I’m imperfect, but if I make a mistake, if I miscommunicate, if something I say is not biblical or is off balance, then I need to apologize.

I say this, after 48 years in preaching, I’ve often learned more from my critics than I have from my friends. I remember a guy came to criticize me once, a young man. I had probably preached about love and he came into my office and he said, “I don’t find you very loving because in the fast lane, an exploding movement, you never have enough time for people. Some people are sensitive, you don’t look them in the eye, you don’t shake their hand, you don’t reach out. They feel you don’t love them.” Do you have any people like that in your church? And as he confronted me, I bowed my head. I said, “Brother, you’re absolutely correct. More love is the greatest need in my life.” I began to weep because I know so often I have not been loving to my wife and to my kids.

I know that I’m disqualified for ministry because of my irritability and my struggle with anger. I’m not faking now. I was trying to explain that I was crying then. This brother became one of my closest friends. He’s one of the greatest preachers and leaders we have in our movement today. He was delivered from one of the most in-depth sexual problems that anybody I ever got involved in counseling. An incredible story. He speaks publicly about it and he’s a marathon runner with a wonderful wife, three children and over 50 years of age.

I want to ask you, where are you going to be when you’re in your 50s? Where are you going to be when you’re in your 60s? Are you going to still be glowing? Are you going to still be going? Will you still be teachable? Will you still be willing to apologize to someone or try to put a situation right? Of course, we will never arrive at perfection and we must not be intimidated by our mistakes. Otherwise, I would not be speaking here now. But the grace of God will keep us going.

Wrong Attitudes

The third mark of lukewarmness, I believe, is often wrong attitudes. I don’t think Charles Swindall is being accused much of being extreme. Some of his material seems a little mellow, but he certainly seems extreme on the attitude thing. He goes around saying 90 percent of the whole Christian life is more or less an attitude. That really makes guys like me feel great. Well, at least I’m scoring on the 10 percent, but I believe it is a mark of lukewarmness. I have had to nail this in my own life. When I’m getting a wrong attitude toward my wife or toward a brother or sister, I see it now as part of Satan’s program to get me discouraged, to get me confused and disappointed.

So I have made a higher priority of just quickly dealing with attitude. I was reading the Word of God this morning, and I’ve hardly ever missed the day in my whole Christian life without being in the word of God. I’ve hardly ever missed a day without being involved in prayer meetings and personal prayer. I don’t say that as a boast because to me those things are just the bottom line. I was sharing with you and then I jumped to something else that at 17 I prayed this prayer, “Lord, more than anything in life, I want to learn how to pray.”

God has answered that prayer because prayer has been a reality all of these years. Anything we say about OM has come from prayer — the 110,000 people that have been with us, the 500 churches we’ve just planted in India just in the past couple of years, the two ocean-going ships that have given the word of God to a 100 million people, the 1,000 workers that are in India, even at this moment, whatever we could say about what’s happened in Europe. In OM, we are far more aware of what has not yet happened and we are far more aware of our weaknesses than we are of our strengths.

So any encouragement people want to give, we don’t mind receiving it because it’s a battle, especially when you’ve made the Muslim world your number one target. I believe with all my heart, anything that’s happened, somehow in the mysterious way that God works has been because of prayer. I’d urge you, make a greater commitment to pray, not just for your child’s church, your city, your friends — and I hope you do have a big prayer list and I’m willing to put some of you on my prayer list — but I hope you will also pray for the nations, as we did in the beginning of this message, and realize about 20 percent of the people in the world have still not once even heard.

Missionaries Still Needed

Some people are spreading around the rumor across America that American missionaries aren’t really needed anymore. I talk about this in my little book. Because of course, God works in different ways, in different times in history, and American missionaries are not needed in the same places where the church is now huge, like South Korea, Brazil, and Argentina. Some specialists may go there and if the Holy Spirit sends someone there, I’m not going to disagree. But I think we need to be more strategic and I think we need to put the Muslim world more onto the map.

I think we need to study some of these countries and as young people come to us for counseling and they’re thinking of going off to Brazil or Mexico, we could try to point out to them that those places now have thousands and thousands of churches. They are sending out missionaries. We, as Americans, because we do tend to be a bit expensive, need to think about the more unreached places in the world where the church hardly even exists, where there are millions and hundreds of millions that have never even once heard. And of course, if the national church is minute like it would be in Libya or Algeria, then we need internationals. We don’t care if they’re Americans or Koreans or Brazilians or Chinese, and the Chinese are on the move. So my brothers and sisters let’s continue to send Americans.

I thank God that when local churches laid their hands on me way back in the 50s and sent me to Mexico and then to Europe. We first lived in Spain and then in India and Nepal and many other countries. I’m glad they didn’t just cross my name off the list because I was an American. By the way, OM has proven that Americans can generally live on the same amount of money as people from other countries. We don’t have to carry all of our American baggage with us. We don’t need eight missionary barrels. And I personally thank God that John Piper’s one of the few outspoken spoken persons I know in America who’s crying out about materialism, who’s calling on people to somehow simplify their lifestyle and become more sacrificial and more generous. I know there are problems. I know you can get into extremes. I was in extremes. I wouldn’t give my wife hardly any money, and it’s a miracle my marriage even lasted.

Love at First Sight

Guys like me, we probably should stay single except we’re oversexed and that’s a problem when you’re single. So God in his mercy gave me this wonderful woman. I had two-and-a-half years of fasting, no girls. That’s when I went to Mexico when this work was born. Then I left university, which my peers and my parents didn’t appreciate, and went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. I didn’t know anything about Bible institutes, but I wanted a witness for Christ in a city. So I went to Chicago. And I thought, “When I get there, I’m going to read all these born-again girls. They’re all safe.” So I got there. I was in love with seven girls within seven days.

Then I went to see a Moody science film. I stepped out of the elevator, turned to the right, and there I saw this beautiful young woman sitting at the desk in charge of the films. It was love at first sight. It was so powerful, I thought it might be from the devil. I tried to scare her. I said, “Look, you’re probably not going to be a missionary are you?” I thought I could finish it off right here. I wouldn’t even touch anybody, wasn’t going to be a missionary. And she said, “Well, why do you say that?” She was a little frightened, a little country girl from Iowa and Wisconsin. Here was this loud-mouthed, aggressive, choleric, New Jersey guy. I said, “Well, look, all the good looking girls here (I was trying to hint) are all chasing pastors.” Anyway, she wasn’t in love with me, so I took her on a sort of a date. It was an interrogation and I’m going to wind down soon because all this gets a bit bizarre.

I said to Lou, “Look, nothing’s going to happen between me and you, but you need to know from the beginning, I’m going to be a missionary and if you marry me, you’ll probably end up being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea.” Whoa, needless to say, she was still not in love. I then gave her a bag of dirty, vile laundry. I wasn’t big into washing in those days. I was a little hyper. And I said, “Well, you wash this as unto the Lord.” Whoa, she did it. I knew she was from God.

I then gave her those couple of key verses out of Ephesians: “Submit unto your husbands as unto the Lord.” She not only believed that but she thought I was a great Bible teacher. She gave me all of her money for missions. She’d be a millionaire today if she’d given it to Sam Walton instead of Verwer. And then we got married. We didn’t really know each other. Humanly speaking, it was a mismatch. There’s a lot more things I could say. I didn’t believe in honeymoons. I went straight to Mexico, sold all the possessions on the way to buy the gasoline. We got to Mexico City and I didn’t believe in renting an apartment. We lived on the floor in the back of a bookstore we just opened. And I tell you, we had a tremendous marriage, for several weeks.

Then she read those other verses that have really been bothering me. They said, “Husbands, love your wife as Christ loved the church.” That’s extreme, isn’t it? You have to bring that into balance from other verses and just watch out for any extremism like loving your wife too much. How many of you, your biggest problem is you are demonstrating too much love for your wife? Would all hypocrites please stand at this point?

Other Signs of Lukewarmness

My brothers and a few sisters, you have been very patient. Perhaps I’ve not preached a message. I’ve just opened my heart. My heart is always full. I’ve never had a day when somehow something wasn’t there. Even when I wake up fairly miserable, going to bed at midnight, and getting up at 4:30 a.m. as I did last night isn’t exactly our favorite thing. But I find God meets me in his word. God meets me through his Holy Spirit and God, somehow in his grace, in his forgiveness, keeps me going. What are some of those other signs of lukewarmness? Of course, a lack of evangelistic zeal, lack of vision for people and the nations, and a lack of concern concerning these mega problems in the world, like HIV and AIDS. We should all be talking about that. We should all be praying about that.

I’d be happy to send you a free book on the subject as I feel the Spirit of God has put on my heart in my senior years that working with people with HIV (40 million of them) and helping to prevent millions from getting it through a proclamation of the message of moral purity and the word of God is perhaps the biggest single project that God has put on my lap in a ministry and a fund that OM has let me have. I’m still part of OM. It’s called Special Projects Ministries. I believe the church should be on the cutting edge of these global problems. This includes the global challenge of poverty, the global challenge of abused children at risk, the global challenge of women at risk — hundreds of thousands sold into prostitution — and the global challenge of female circumcision that is still going on across the world. It’s one of the most ugly things on planet earth.

One of the only articles I’ve never been able to finish was an article about female circumcision. I could not finish it, and I read a lot of heavy stuff and have been involved with a lot of suffering people. I believe the lack of concern about these things and the tendency to be only concerned with the things that really touch us and our families and our churches can make you very lukewarm. You can be very selfish, you can be on an ego trip, and quite arrogant, and not very spiritual and still be concerned about your own house and your own car, and your own salary and your own little backyard.

I’m not saying that’s wrong when it’s in balance with a bigger picture of love and compassion and concern for the peoples of the world, demonstrated by our Savior and all those who have biblically followed him through the centuries. May God grant us a greater anointing, a greater fullness of the Holy Spirit to be his man, his woman, whether it’s here or it’s my life 42 years overseas.

We’re still praying about the first furlough. It sounds interesting, but somehow God kept us a little bit busy in bringing in a harvest, and without hardly even knowing it, birthing a spiritual movement which is way beyond my small part, but hallelujah. I’d rather be a small part, a tiny part in the work of the kingdom, than somebody famous and big in that which is just a waste of time. I’d close with the words of this book: Don’t waste your life. It can even happen to men and women in ministry.